3D Modeling Round-Up

trueSpace

To be very blunt about it, trueSpace
by Caligari is going to give you one of the best price-to-feature ratios in this review. It contains features that you usually don't
find until you get tools at more than twice its price. Besides that, the program
itself is pretty good, too, and should make new 3D artists happy. Of course to follow suit with the rest of this roundup, we'll discuss
trueSpace's interface now. It's a lot less full of
buttons and windows than other programs, so those tiring of this discussion will
get a little reprieve. The bulk of the interface is devoted to your
three-dimensional "canvas," which many will find as a relief to traditionally cluttered 3D interfaces. At the bottom of the screen is a set of
toolbars which contain every tool used. File functions are handled by the token
few menus below the toolbars. The sets of toolbars that are displayed can be
toggled on and off, so you can adjust your tools according to your screen size
and/or work flow. Here's a look:

The top of the workspace where the "canvas" is contained has a very
novel interface caveat to it. trueSpace has a feature in its interface called
widgets which move the tools closer to your mouse cursor, in theory allowing you
to work more efficiently. The widgets are little 3D icons that are rendered in
your workspace next to your mouse cursor. One widget that is displayed
automatically is the view widget, which lets you adjust the perspective view.
Another widget displayed automatically when you select an object is the
navigation widget which allows you to move, scale, and rotate the object. You
can also pop up other widgets that give you tools to edit individual polygons,
and also to adjust general preferences. There are duplicates to all of these
widgets in toolbar form, so their use is optional. They take a little getting
used to, at least for users of old versions of trueSpace like me. Widgets in
general are good to work with, but it takes a little learning and glancing at
tool tips to figure out what each one does. Since widgets are 3D objects
rendered in your view (but not in a final render), they look neat and are clear
to work with. Since they are rendered in your view, though, if you are in
wireframe mode, your widgets will be wireframe, too. Because of their small
size, they can be hard to discern as wireframes. trueSpace lets you use DirectX
or OpenGL, along with Intel's antiquated 3DR API when modeling, so you should be
well covered for what your 3D accelerator can handle. You can't be a 3D artist,
let alone a respectable Ars reader, if your system doesn't have some form of 3D
acceleration.

Beyond using primitives to model, trueSpace has three really advanced modeling
features: NURBS, Metaballs, and PlastiForm. Metaballs should be familiar for
those who read the section on Amorphium. Rather than explain them again, take a
look at that portion of the review. The only things added by trueSpace are that
you can also use other primitives along with spheres as Metaballs.

PlastiForm is the one advanced modeling tool here that is unique to trueSpace.
PlastiForm allows you to take a primitive, and pull out of it a sphere or
cylinder. Think of it as a simplifed Amorphium brush with a positive pull. If you
thought Amorphium would be really useful for your projects, but it lacked the
traditional tools you needed, trueSpace might fit the bill for you.

NURBS are one of the truly nifty modeling features trueSpace offers. If you're
one of those people who love the minutia of acronyms, NURBS stands for
Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines. I have no clue what this actually means, and it
probably matters little to the end-user, too. The easy way to think about it is
when you take a standard polygonal model, applying NURBS to it will make your
model rounded. Dumbing down what NURBS does to such a degree really makes it
look useless, but to the contrary, NURBS finds its use in creating those models
that you can't create by just fine-tuning a polygonal model to the nth degree. These pictures should give you a visual
idea of what NURBS do.

Animation features in trueSpace are particularly robust. It has bones, inverse
kinematics, keyframes, and other associated tools. One of the animation tools
that really stands out is the physical simulation feature. This tool assigns
physical values to your objects, and calculates an animation for them conforming
to the laws of physics. You can use this tool on all of your models. It produces
some very cool effects when you use it with Metaballs.

When doing your render, you get the same flexibility that you get with most 3D
products. trueSpace also includes a radiosity renderer, which gives you some
great light effects. Radiosity was described back in the Animation:Master
review.

For $595, trueSpace contains a lot of high-end features for a relatively small
amount of money. If you're starting off with 3D and have a limited budget, but
have aspirations for high places, trueSpace is for you.